


Revelation

by cptsdstars



Series: Some Kind of Holy Word [3]
Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Established Relationship, F/M, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Polyamory, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Sadie Adler Is A Big Lesbian, endgame spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-22
Updated: 2019-03-22
Packaged: 2019-11-27 19:57:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18198647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cptsdstars/pseuds/cptsdstars
Summary: Her whole family had survived the end of the world. That’s a miracle in of itself.Not that she believed in God anyway, she grew up as a whore. Whores don’t step foot in a church. Whores are inherently sinners. Whores don’t ask for forgiveness.She did meet God once, she’s sure.





	Revelation

The world doesn’t end with hellfire and blood raining down from the heavens as the scripture suggests. It’s more of a slow decline, visibly rotting away at Abigail’s feet. 

She remembers hearing some horrible story from a drunken priest. The first sign of the end of the world would be a mad man, thinking he’s royalty atop a white horse. 

She never thought she’d be trapped with that mad man as the world,  _ her world _ , ended around her. 

Arthur is dying. John is dead. 

She holds her hands against Arthur’s stuttering chest as he rides with her far from the madman at the center of it all and towards her terrified son. 

She can feel his breath struggling, his lungs rotting away under her touch. All she can think to do is weep, cry out helplessly to a God she wasn’t sure was there. 

Arthur asks her quietly what she knew of the scriptures.  _ Not much,  _ is her hysterical reply. 

The goodbyes are horrific. Arthur won’t let her cry. They’re twenty minutes in the opposite direction from him when she realizes deep in her heart he was really going to die. 

She holds Jack close to her late into the night, sitting in the dirt and staring out into the pitch-black trail, praying and begging and crying out for any miracle. 

Jack begins to cry in her arms, a response to her own hysterical state. Sadie rests her hand on her shoulder, offers to take him from her but she shakes her head and holds him closer to her chest.

At a loss of what to do at the end of her world, she sings. 

_ “Sinners turn, why will ye die? God, your Savior, asks you why.”  _

Jack’s crying slows, Sadie’s hand falls away from her shoulder and rests gently on her thigh.

She sounds like shit. A mumbled, out-of-tune mess desperately trying to keep any faith in her heart that maybe her lovers survived and are coming for her through the thick night. 

Sadie lets her think that. Bless her heart. 

_ “God Who did your souls retrieve, that ye might forever live. Will you let Him die in vain?” _

Jack gasps, wriggles his way out from her embrace and points down the dirt road. “There’s someone over there,” he says quietly. 

Sure enough a figure on a horse is riding slowly right for them, lanternless in the dark night.

Sadie stands, hand hovering just close enough to her holster. Abigail can’t bring herself to care who might be coming for them. She sings softly. 

“ _ Why, ye ransomed sinners, why, will you slight His grace, and die?” _

“Abigail!” the figure shouts down the road, and Abigail freezes. 

It can’t be. 

“Abigail!” it shouts again, and Abigail flies out of the dirt, feet carrying her as fast as she can go towards John,  _ her John _ . 

He’s barely off the horse, clutching his arm and wobbling on his feet when Abigail tackles him, accidentally pushing him into the dirt with the force of her embrace. She ends up on top of him, sobbing while he grins foolishly up at her. 

“You were dead, they said you were dead!” she cries, touching his scarred face with shaking hands. 

He grabs her hips, kisses her with all the force he can muster. “You can’t get rid of me that easily, Miss Roberts.” 

She laughs, tears falling from her eyes for what feels like the twelfth time that day.  

John gently pushes her off of him, sitting up so he can see Sadie and Jack at the end of the trail. Abigail refuses to let go of his face, terrified of him slipping through her fingers. 

He looks at her carefully, the joy in his eyes fading. 

“He’s dying, Abbi.”

She looks, turns her head slowly to the back of John's horse and stares at the dark mass of the man laying limp against John’s saddle. 

She feels hot tears fall against her hand and she whips her head back to look at John. He looks like a helpless child sitting under her in the dirt.

“He saved my life,” John whispers. “We have to save his.” 

Abigail pulls her shaking hand away from John’s face, reaches up towards Arthur’s pale one. She stops herself before she touches him, scared of breaking him. Terrified of him disappearing under her touch. 

Miracles happen, she keeps telling herself. 

John was dead and he came back to her. Arthur was mere hours away from death but he’s hanging on. Miracles happen and maybe they’ll continue to happen to her. 

Her whole family had survived the end of the world. That’s a miracle in of itself. 

Not that she believed in God anyway, she grew up as a whore. Whores don’t step foot in a church. Whores are inherently sinners. Whores don’t ask for forgiveness. 

She did meet God once, she’s sure. 

She was sixteen, her mistress hired her to travel along with some lonely businessman all the way north to Detroit. It was decent. It was a job. She got to see a whole different world to hers, a big bustling city more brown and grey than anything she had ever seen before. 

Late one night she stood outside the hotel, smoking a cigarette, staring out over the water at the landmass on the other side of it. The man she was with told her it was Canada, a whole new country. 

A man had walked up to her, dark skinned, dressed immaculately. He had asked for a cigarette. She had given him one. 

They stood in silence smoking, staring out at the soft light across the river. 

“You know, you’re a little young to be smoking,” he had said before taking another drag. 

Abigail had looked at him, laughed a little in her chest. “I’m a little young to do a lot of things, mister.”

“Oh, so you’re a whore?” he said then. 

Abigail just put her cigarette back into her mouth, turned her attention back to the river. 

“A tragedy,” the man had said, shaking his head. 

Abigail didn’t know how to reply. She didn’t want to. 

“I’m sorry for that, then,” the man had said throwing his cigarette on the ground and stomping on it. 

“It ain’t your fault, mister,” Abigail muttered. 

The man looked at her in the dark. She wanted to feel uneasy, but she trusted this man against her better judgement, she didn’t know why. 

“You’re going to have so much pain in your life, dear Abigail. I’m sorry,” he had said before tipping his hat at her and walking away. 

Abigail stood, staring at Canada, her cigarette burning away in her hand. She still doesn’t know how the man knew her name. 

The only explanation she understood was that the man she met was God, mocking her for something he caused. Abigail was not, could not be a religious woman, yet that man was who she pictured while praying that night. 

Sadie had helped them steal a wagon, helped lay poor Arthur down in the back with only Abigail’s lap as a pillow. 

John held him down as Sadie addressed the wound in his side. She stitched it together and bandaged it up as best she could while Arthur practically screamed. 

At least he was alive enough to feel pain, Abigail thought. 

After Arthur was laid back down, half awake and delusional from the intrusion, Sadie had insisted on staying with them. She cited the fact that John, despite his protesting, can’t shoot with the bullet wound straight through his arm, and of course Arthur is no use for them, now. So they agreed to let her drive the wagon, her face less recognizable than John’s, her resolve stronger, herself less exhausted because she wasn’t the one who carried Arthur down a mountain. 

Besides, Abigail wasn’t ready to leave her behind just yet. 

Arthur, thankfully, fell asleep. Jack did too, leaning up against his father in the back of the wagon. Abigail pretended not to hear the soft hiccups coming from John, pretended not to notice the way his arm was protectively wrapped around little Jack. 

Abigail rests her fingers against Arthur’s lips, feeling his still there, but struggling breaths. He couldn’t die. Not here, not before they could try to save him. 

She leans down, presses her lips against his fire-hot forehead, mumbles a prayer into his skin. Begs the lord to let him live. 

John shifts, glances back at her in the dark. 

All she has to do is look at him, her hands gently cradling Arthur’s heavy head, and John nods, asks Sadie to hurry up. 

They reach a small little livestock town early in the morning just as the sun starts to rise. Abigail didn’t catch the name; she didn’t care too much. Sadie stops the wagon, crawls into the back with Abigail, runs her hand through Arthur’s hair as gently as she can. 

John watches her, Abigail watches him, watches how his jaw tightens at the sight of Arthur laying limp between the three of them. 

Jack’s still asleep, Abigail’s little heart holds some relief for that. 

“There has to be a doctor for him here,” Sadie mutters. Abigail shifts finally out from underneath Arthur. 

“I’ll go,” she says. John shoots her a worried look and she grabs his hand. “I’m the only one not armed to the teeth and not covered in blood, I think I’m in the best position to ask a stranger for help.”

She sees every little possible thing that could go wrong flash behind John’s eyes as he looks at her in the morning light. Without a word spoken, Abigail can see he’s terrified of losing her, even if she’s just walking a half mile into town. 

Sadie unhooks her knife belt, hikes up Abigail’s skirt and straps it against her thigh. John gives her a strange look, not quite jealousy, and Sadie smooths Abigail’s skirt back down gently. 

“There. Now she can handle herself.” Sadie sits back against the cloth of the wagon. John looks back at Abigail.

“It’ll be okay,” she says as she kisses him softly. “Take care of our boys.” She gives his hand a reassuring squeeze and slides out from the wagon into the soft morning light. 

She doesn’t look back as she walks towards the small town, mutters another pleading prayer under her breath as she walks. She can feel the morning dew soak the bottom of her dress, the knife strapped to her thigh heavy with every step. She’s exhausted, she realizes. 

She’s exhausted and the world hasn’t ended yet. 

Abigail passes a hotel, some houses, a store. Each one slowly opening up for the day. Men and women and children all pass her by without any fear without any pain and she feels lost. She feels as though she and only she has witnessed the end of the world. 

Everyone around her keeps living and breathing as if though there’s a guaranteed future. 

She reaches the small doctor’s office and steps inside as quietly as she can, a woman looks up from a table and smiles rather sleepily up at her. 

“Good morning,” the woman says. “Can I help you?” 

Abigail reaches into her satchel, pulls out all the money Sadie had collected from the four of them, and sets it on the table gently in front of the kind-faced woman. 

She looks surprised. Abigail supposes she would be too. 

“My brother-in-law is dying,” Abigail lies quietly. She hates how god damn pathetic she sounds. “I hope that’ll be enough to help him.” 

The woman doesn’t touch the money, she stands, opens a door and disappears. Abigail suddenly feels all the pain in her feet, in her shoulders, in the way her jaw aches in time with her heartbeat. 

The woman comes back followed by a rather old man, but he seems anything but fragile. He grabs a bag, touches Abigail’s back with the kind of gentle touch she hasn’t felt in a long time. 

“Take me to him,” the man says, and then Abigail’s walking back through the dew covered grass, wondering how they’re gonna keep going after this.

Abigail’s whole life has been like that, wondering how she’s going to keep going with a child, without a husband, without a gang, without her mother. 

Her demon of a mother, but her mother nonetheless. 

The first time she had slept with Arthur, afterwards they were talking about their parents between a shared cigarette. It was nice. Abigail rarely talked after nights like that, but Arthur was different. 

She told him all about her mother, the way she would pull her hair, slap her around, refuse to feed her because  _ you’re already too fat.  _

Arthur brushed her hair away from her eyes, took a drag from the cigarette. 

_ I would’ve killed her had I known her. _

Abigail laughed, pushed against Arthur playfully, called him an idiot. 

He shook his head.  _ I killed my own pa, I’m already on my way to hell. What’s one more horrible parent?  _

Abigail brushed her hand over his chest.  _ You don’t go to hell for killing your parents.  _

Arthur raised an eyebrow, looked at her with a smirk in the dark.  _ And how do you know that, Sister Roberts?  _

Abigail doesn’t laugh at the joke, she just takes a drag of the cigarette. 

_ I don’t. But God would be a fool if he punished you for killing the devil.  _

_ - _

She loves Arthur. 

She realizes it holding John’s hand while the doctor they hired stitches and listens and tests and pokes Arthur in the back of their wagon. 

It’s not that she doesn’t love John though, she loves him too, more than anyone in this world. But she loves Arthur too. Just as much. 

Wants to spend what’s left of her life with both of them. 

She figured as much when all they did was fool around together. She figured when John would kiss Arthur gently in the morning after. She figured when Arthur would get down on their knees for both of them, hold them in his hands, worship them. 

Now she knows, knows she couldn’t, won’t lose Arthur. 

John knows too, she can see it in his tired eyes even if he can’t. 

But if this doctor can’t save him, if he dies in this nameless town in the back of this run down wagon Abigail thinks that might actually bring about the end of the world. 

The start of the end was a madman on his white horse, leaving her husband for dead. The end would be Arthur Morgan dying before she and her husband ever get the chance to love him. 

God wouldn’t be so cruel to her, she’s sure. 

He told her he was sorry. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on Twitter @ah_katie for some more garbage content


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